Earth's Largest Crater Is Hiding in Plain Sight

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An asteroid nearly twice the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs left a record-setting crater in South Africa. If you look closely, you can still see it today, 2 billion years later.
Hosted by: Jaida Elcock (She/her)
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Sources: docs.google.co...

[@SciShow]

JMP offers a 30-day free trial for anyone, anywhere. Go to www.jmp.com/scishow to see the benefits of visual statistics for yourself.

[@ProSandlin]

Would the team ever consider adding a little “after this message” before the add break and maybe a bar at the bottom to show it’s an add break? It always catches me off guard and I think the video’s over lol. I imagine people that watch the channel less click or then too.

[@dvoiceotruth]

An interesting sponsor!

[@JohnDoe-qz1ql]

Shouldn't have plate tectonics devoured lands 2 Billion years old???

[@alanmckinnon6791]

I live in Johannesburg, the crater is about 2 hours drive away. And yes it is almost totally unrecognizable - if you stand more or less in the middle you can see a mountain range on the horizon. Except it's not a mountain range, it's the crater rim. Mindblowing! p.s. a word on pronunciation, Vredeforst is spoken with an initial "F" sound, not a "V"; the name and language traces back to 16th century Dutch

[@dvoiceotruth]

makhonjwa mountains and this one are the two sites you cannot visit elsewhere in the world.

[@madcow3417]

If I were 2 billion years old I probably wouldn't look much like a crater either.

[@fredricktalbot1945]

I don’t think you look like a crater at this point either.

[@fredricktalbot1945]

Not meant to be rude. Just sounded funny in my head.

[@JohnDoe-qz1ql]

Wouldn't look much like yourself either!

[@magscat3161]

"it's held the record for world's biggest crater for 2 billion years" ... let's all hope nothing comes along to break that record.

[@faytleingod1851]

It's also kind of hard to hold a record when no one knew about it until recently 😂

[@trishapellis]

I seem to have heard something recently about lydar uncovering the "oldest crater on Earth" beneath Antarctica's ice...

[@coryman125]

Saying "15km/s is faster than a fighter jet" is a bit like saying the Empire State Building is larger than a fruit fly

[@wavion2]

It's only mach 43. Ish. I imagine Tom Cruise will get up to about half that in the next Top Gun movie. 😆

[@Maphisto86]

Thanks Jaida and the rest of the SciShow crew for this episode. I heard about this impact event, but this video really helped me understand how awesome it was. 😮

[@rafaelperalta1676]

It's amazing that we live in this day and gets scientific discoveries left and right.

[@Erik-pu4mj]

I really like Jaida as a host! She's a great speaker with helpful intonation and at a good pace--an odd thing to highlight, perhaps, but I feel pace matters a lot for balancing processing speed and attention.

[@danser_theplayer01]

South Africa mentioned. Asteroid mentioned. Wakanda confirmed.

[@AaronGeo]

How about Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica? You can literally see a ring of islands if you took all the ice off the continent around the crater

[@hypotheticalaxolotl]

It's not a confirmed crater. Could be one, but isn't fer sure.

[@sncy5303]

@@hypotheticalaxolotl exactly… only a probable impact crater. However, if it is one, there are some hypothesis that it may have caused the Siberian Traps per antipodal volcanism and the Great Dying mass extinction as a result.

[@AaronGeo]

​@@sncy5303 That's actually quite interesting

[@papyrusisverycool2372]

SHE'S WEARING THE SHIRT GUYS

[@adirondackErin]

Does it mean something?

[@papyrusisverycool2372]

@@adirondackErin idk it's their merch

[@kellydalstok8900]

Is it a Doctor Who reference (the impossible astronaut)?

[@jonathancrowder3424]

​@@kellydalstok8900That's what I thought too

[@Copterman]

I love this channel!

[@konan4heather]

I looooove JMP

[@fr57ujf]

The speed of a fighter jet isn't a good way to visualize the speed of an asteroid traveling at 15 kilometers per second. A fighter jet can travel at 2,500 kilometers per hour. At 15 kilometers per second, the asteroid's speed is 9.2 MILLION kilometers per hour - 3,700 times faster than the jet.

[@alexanderstone9463]

Largest that we know of so far… There might be a crater even bigger than Vrederfort in Australia. The Deniliquin impact structure, which if it exists almost certainly caused the Late Ordovician extinction event.

[@tshegofatshomotlatle6426]

I’m in Johannesburg right now 😮

[@SeveralGhost]

Im pretty sure Jaida is left handed

[@megawin888]

You are a fantastic host. Lots of good energy. You are a natural presenter. If you don't already have the credentials - go get your masters or PhD. It's wonderful to see young people excell. Keep up the good work.

[@dvoiceotruth]

balance of speed and clarity.

[@dvoiceotruth]

I was wondering what signs of that impact remain in the Indian Subcon which was adjacent to South Africa some 200-300km across.

[@CrimsonCateye]

Absolutely love Jaida's shatk tattoo on her arm! I can really tell she loves her job!

[@thecodemachine]

How do you not mention that Hawaii, is on the opposite side of that crater, and it is thought that the island's hot spot was formed because of that impact in South Africa.

[@ArmchairDeity]

😮 I did not know that! Fantastic fact… and it makes perfect sense…

[@madbeef420]

Earth has a solid iron core. If the impact somehow caused Hawaii, wouldn't that imply that the asteroid went through the core of the planet? Or the shockwaves went through the core or however that would have to work? I have no idea tbh, but it seems crazy that something on one side of the planet can affect the opposite side when there is a giant metal ball in between. Help me out

[@ArmchairDeity]

@@madbeef420 it’s not a “giant metal ball”, although anyone who has played Billiards or seen a Newtons Cradle knows that would actually make more sense. But no, the core is LIQUID iron. So shockwaves would propagate through the molten core. Also I think you’re misunderstanding the degree of energy release here… if a basic tectonic shift can change the earth’s tilt, imagine something twice the the size of Mount Everest hitting the earth at 15 miles per second. Going that fast even drag wouldn’t slow it down… it would have left a void behind where it had shoved the atmosphere apart. There’s rock from Chicxulub that’s been recovered from the moon… that’s fast enough to achieve escape velocity (7 miles per second)… Now make the asteroid 30% larger and going the same speed… it would have more than enough mass to deform continental crush and send shockwaves through the core to the other side of the planet.

[@b.a.erlebacher1139]

Well, no. Hawaii is the current location of a hotspot that has been travelling more or less eastward, after a time travelling southward for a mere 100 million years or less, very recent compared to the Vredefort impact. Actually, it's the earth's crust that has been moving over the relatively stationary hotspot, but it's easier to visualize the other way around. There are dozens of identified and suspected hotspots on earth, and none of them have any known relationship to the Vredefort impact. Btw, the oceanic crust Hawaii is on is relatively young in comparison, and didn't exist 2 billion years ago, maybe only a tenth of that age.

[@sigisoltau6073]

That's because when this Crater formed about 2 billion years ago, South Africa was on another part of the earth. You do know about crustal plates right? And that they move? Well over the last 2 billion years, the section of crustal plate carrying South Africa has moved several thousand kilometers or miles from where the event happened originally.

[@troylhester]

Thanks so much for a great video! I was wondering if this impact is a candidate for the moon forming hypothesis, or would that have happened much earlier?

[@OLDMANTEA]

That crater isn’t going away anytime soon

[@Umbralva]

love the new host

[@kellynbotha]

I live inside the crater 😎

[@moonshoes11]

I wonder if the impact was responsible for creating diamonds?

[@joaom2057]

Wilkes Land anomaly if confirmed will be the biggest

[@2007packo]

Umm, a rock traveling at up to 15 km a second and you compare it to a fighter jet? Even the fastest jets built by humans do or did not even come close to that kind of speed... Take 15 times 3600 and you would get 54000 km an hour. That jet would need to go around the earth in less than one hour, whereas even the astronauts on the ISS can only go around the earth 16 times a day and that is without much atmospheric drag...

[@neoverload8685]

About 2 times the speed of the ISS

[@MockinGlobes]

Yeah just did a double take when they made that comparison. What the hell kinda fighter jets do they think we got?

[@Leyrann]

25 km is also not the size of a small town. That's the size of a major city. The Amsterdam metropolitan area measured along it's longest axis doesn't reach 25 km.

[@berthaadamson1225]

Cut them a little slack. They are trying to create a picture for average people and fighter jets are probably the fastest object to which most people can relate. Few have any real understanding of how fast ISS is orbiting. Most probably think it is just stationary above the planet.

[@neoverload8685]

@@berthaadamson1225 then just remind them that the fastest plane ever made (not counting the x-43) is 14 times slower than this rock

[@Mutaaatia]

Wow

[@Kerry-uo6og]

Lucifer's hammer.👍

[@chiragdoshi5036]

Whoa!

[@TheStickCollector]

It is crazy they don't teach you any of these. Neat.

[@borttorbbq2556]

Not really useful good for later education but doesn't help it would just be another example

[@triviszla1536]

mmm craters

[@clusterfer]

Ummm, no... Sorry. Up until recently it probably would've been correct to say this but it looks like the Deniliquin crater is likely to be bigger. Based on the latest research of course!! One thing we can say for sure: more science is needed!!😁😁

[@Sailor376also]

Sanikilauq The structure has all the earmarks except shocked quartz, But how many glaciers over how many millions of years have scoured that landscape. I submit perfectly circular and a double ridge at the perimeter, and a high point in the center.

[@duntamin]

*SciShow REAL FANS ARE YOU HERE ?!! 💖✨*

[@kylevanzandbergen3285]

This spam problem is ridiculous

[@faytleingod1851]

How does it have 200+ likes? Sci show fans funny recognize bots 🤔

[@charlessarver1637]

Nice picture

[@Dolph-fe2ks]

​@@faytleingod1851I hope they find the answer to that question on the inside. If you catch my drift.

[@AaronGeo]

*clicks report*

[@wilkby]

“Twice the size of Los Angeles” doesn’t really tell us anything helpful about the size of that crater, other than it’s big.

[@PsyOpsAVA]

Bruh. She literally says the size of the crater like 10 seconds later. It's 280km wide (about 175 miles).

[@faytleingod1851]

That's 900,000 flamingoes wide 😯 learn your American metric system

[@viktoriar1762]

😂​@@faytleingod1851

[@mayankdhapwal3715]

whats the highest crater on earth ?

[@markdavis7397]

A barbeque pit in Snoop Dogg's back yard.

[@laiika511]

I expect all of us to refrain from “yo mama” jokes. Let’s keep scishow classy

[@alien9279]

Yo mama is classy 😏

[@kennethloki7011]

Yo mama is a sweet lady and hope she has a wonderful day.

[@tiki_trash]

Records are made to be broken.

[@threecatsdancing]

Is this where vibranium came from? 😉🤣

[@Garagantua]

Not vibranium, but close. That impact brought up quite a lot of the gold we humans have mined.

[@shaheenbhoola]

Home sweet home. Probably why there's gold in them thar hills boy!!

[@BryanSchaeber]

Friendly reminder that its okay to not be religious 😊❤

[@robinblankenship9234]

And, it just as iust ok to believe in God. Religion is a human made construct. God, not so much.

[@MichaelWinter-ss6lx]

Religion makes you free of the burden of dealing with GOD. This is now job for the priest. Of course you're never sure if priest do his work for you, but if you don't pay you can at least be sure he wont work for you.

[@oberonpanopticon]

It’s a shame that any larger craters have probably been rendered unrecognizable by geological activity. I mean, look at the craters on mars or the moon! Imagine if earth had one of those…

[@acemanhomer1]

I’d like to direct everyones attention to the potential fact that Lake Victoria is at the epicenter of another large ancient impact.

[@edwardallenthree]

Technically, anything outside is visible from space on a clear day.

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

To a point. Starting with the aperture of the observing instrument. Your eyes have a puny aperture. Then there’s atmospheric distortion, the stuff that makes stars twinkle, but in reverse. From orbit ~150 miles up, you might be able to distinguish features a dozen feet across. So, the outlines of houses but not newspaper headlines.

[@UptownMarty]

Why yall cant ever say miles??? Wtf is a kilometer?????

[@dominiquelaflamme7804]

Hate to break it to you, but a mile is only a unit of measurement on your planet, bro.

[@UptownMarty]

@@dominiquelaflamme7804 in English it is…When I ask how fast the car was going, You wouldn’t say 60 kilometers. You would say miles

[@scripter13]

Midrolls still suck! Considering you have chosen to increase your ad funding, I have pulled my patreon sub.

[@jawharp9467]

My comment has no value to the reader.

[@endoline8221]

Wilkes land crater is bigger

[@lal6996]

yayayaya she says vredefort pretty spot on! well done lady! 🫶🏻

[@brfisher1123]

What happened to SciShow’s usual outro? Ending their videos so suddenly like this isn’t how they’ve been doing the outro for their videos for years.

[@jensissons5709]

had to slow down speech.....way to rushed

[@Blueelectricaltape]

When will you show me my FREE ENERGY design?

[@alien9279]

When it works lmao (they dont)

[@SoumyaGuharoy-m9r]

1st to comment.

[@moonshoes11]

Early bird gets the 🪱. 👍

[@obiwanjacobi]

Vredefort => Peace Fort